This is a bit backwards and very much in line with how they spoke on it.
The game's systems are simple once you've sat down with them for a minute, they're just obtuse in how they're designed. They could design in a way where you ultimately end up with all the options you have now but without overwhelming a player just starting out. That's the entire premise behind having good tutorials in games or how systems are designed to progressively give players information as it becomes relevant in other games.
The comparison to dark souls doesn't hold up, because no ones speaking about the games difficulty unless you view the games difficulty in terms of how difficult it is to get into due to its unintuitive design.